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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26990371">My Hands Are Of Your Colour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hephaestiions/pseuds/hephaestiions'>hephaestiions</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Assassins &amp; Hitmen, Blood and Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Oral Sex, Showers, it's not anyone from the hpverse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:42:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26990371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hephaestiions/pseuds/hephaestiions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve tortured before, because the Dark Lord would… anyway. I’ve seen murder before. I’ve seen my professor being eaten by a giant snake before. But I’ve never… killed.” </p><p>“And?” Harry prompts, when Draco stops there though it’s obvious there’s more he wants to say. </p><p>“And it was <i>horrifying</i>,” Draco says quietly.</p><p>– </p><p>Sometimes spilled blood lingers on guilty hands. Draco sees red and Harry washes it clean.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>HP Suds Fest 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Blood Will Have Blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to the mods for organising this brilliant fest and to the prompter who asked for a Drarry version of the Bond/Vesper shower scene from Casino Royale. I did my best. There are probably inconsistencies in the fic with regards to the reality of the professions portrayed but I just wanted to write hurt/comfort in a soapy shower scene. I hope you enjoy this little part of my heart that rejoices in the juxtaposition of the coarse and the soft, especially in a Drarry scenario.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood</em>
  </span>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather</em>
  </span>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>The multitudinous seas incarnadine,</em>
  </span>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>Making the green one red.</em>
  </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">– Macbeth, William Shakespeare<br/><br/><br/></span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Julian was undeniably one of Harry’s best fucks. <br/><br/>He was also, undeniably, bleeding out onto the carpet of the motel room Harry and Draco had rented for the night, and was also, undeniably, quite dead. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Seven years on the job, and Harry still manages to be surprised at the sheer amount of blood the human body is capable of leaking out when there is no heart to govern its flow and no brain to register its pain. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As of now, that amount is getting alarmingly out of control– the blood has seeped through the carpet onto the floor and is now pooling around the large four poster bed’s edge. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Is he…” <br/><br/>“Dead,” Harry clarifies, without looking up. “You struck the jugular.” <br/><br/>The startled, almost pained sound in response is surprising enough for Harry to tilt his head up. Draco’s white as a sheet on the bed, bloody knife clenched in one outstretched hand and the other pressed up against his own throat, where the veins and arteries beat to the rhythm of his heartbeat. From the way Draco’s breathing– short and shallow– Harry’s certain that heartbeat is running a little too fast for comfort. <br/><br/>He looks like a man on the verge of a raging panic attack. <br/><br/>Like a man who has killed for the first time. <br/><br/>The knife jerks in midair, and Draco startles terribly, looking down at his own arm as though he’s seeing a ghost. He’s trembling, and the blood trickling down his palm splatters all over the bedsheets. The knife drops onto the previously pristine white bedspread and Harry closes his eyes. <br/><br/>There’s already a body, there’s already a bloody carpet, there’s already bloody clothes too. <br/><br/>And now, there are bloodied sheets with the imprint of a bloodied knife on them. <br/><br/>This is going to be a difficult cleanup. </span>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><br/>Draco’s gasping on the bed, both of his hands coming up to circle his own throat. He presses down, choking himself– as though <em>that</em> will remotely help– and whimpers. It’s a strangled sound, drawn out of a throat choking on the bitter taste of sin and a chest pounding with the adrenaline rush of murder.A single, pearly tear trickles down the apple of Draco’s blood splattered cheek, turning pink. <em>Sorrow and sin</em>, Harry thinks, watching the drop trail it’s way down Draco’s twisted, grimacing face, turning red as it trails through the blood splatter above Draco’s lip. <br/><br/>He hasn’t had time for either. Not since he started doing <em>this</em>. </span>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><br/>“It’s– I–“ Draco manages, before choking on his words. Sobs spill from the parted lips and Harry wants to kiss them into the silence of placated torment. “Harry, I–“ </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The realisation is sudden and lurching, the stability of Harry’s world spinning into a torpedo of emotions he does not need while he does his job. He wants… he <em>desperately</em> wants to comfort Draco. He wants to pull Draco, bloody and shaking, into his arms, and hold him there until the sobs quiet and the tiny, pained gasps dropping from his lips fade into sleep or silence, whichever comes first. <br/><br/>But Harry’s hands are stained red with the blood of another man, and if he touches Draco with them now, he will not be able to forgive himself. <br/><br/>So many deaths, so many kills, so much money transferred discreetly into his Gringotts vault. And yet, the one thing that makes him reconsider the red in his ledger is Draco sobbing into his hands with droplets of Julian’s blood clinging to his knuckles. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Draco,” he says, keeping his voice as level as possible in the face of Draco’s cool and careful facade coming undone. “Draco, I need you to do something for me.” <br/><br/>Draco’s shudders do not imply that he has registered, or even heard Harry’s voice. <br/><br/><em>I will not touch him, I will not touch him, I will not touch him.</em> </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Draco,” he says louder. He wants to be repulsed by the slight note of desperation that has crept into his voice. But he cannot find it in himself to be disgusted with an emotion Draco has eked out of him after spending so many years thinking he has been bereaved of feeling. He can’t bring himself to be put off by his own concern. <br/><br/>Julian is dead, and Harry does not feel a shred of remorse. Maybe a touch of nostalgia, when his eyes drift over the rumpled mess of Julian’s hair, the way it looked on sunlit mornings in motels seedier than this one when he woke up to a sleeping Julian with his hand flung over Harry’s waist. <br/><br/><em>We’re it for each other,</em> Julian had said once, in the middle of sex, between breathless moans and biting, hurried kisses. <em>No one else will ever understand us </em>except<em> us</em>. <br/><br/>Harry hopes that’s not true. Not simply because Julian is lying dead at his feet, the hope of those words extinguished like the flame of a sputtering candle in the eye of a raging storm.<br/><br/>He doesn’t want to believe it, because believing it means Draco will never truly be able to reach with his piano perfect fingers into Harry’s soul, press the warmth of his moonlight drenched smile into the scarred curve of Harry’s shoulder and whisper curses that sound like worship into his ear again. <br/><br/>“Draco,” he says, and this time he pitches his voice an octave lower, reaches out to the trembling figure on the bed with not just his words, but also his magic. <br/><br/>The magic he uses to kill, to maim, to rupture envelopes Draco’s hunched form in a soothing embrace of calm. The sobs stop, and the shaking becomes less violent, and a breath Harry didn’t know he was holding flutters from his chest into the heat of the room. <br/><br/>“I need you to call K,” Harry says. Draco is curled in on himself, face still buried in his hands. But the request registers. Draco’s fingers flex, his neck twitches. Harry’s relief pours into his magic, and he sees Draco recognise it, unconsciously leaning into it like he would a cup of warm tea on a rainy afternoon. <br/><br/>Finally, he lifts his face up from the tight web of his fingers, and looks towards Harry. The gray eyes are smudged, ringed with red. The arched angles of his cheekbones are stained with a blush– of shame or regret, Harry can’t tell– and tear streaks run from the circles beneath his fluttering eyelashes to the knife edge of his jawbone. He looks wrecked, a quiver full of broken arrows, and Harry’s heart aches. <br/><br/>“I–“ he begins, and clears his throat, wondering how to be sensitive. Draco is neither weak, nor fragile, but in this moment, he looks like he needs to be protected. This is Harry’s reality, this is mundane. He has cleared more blood and intestinal matter off hotel floors and lobbies and kitchen counters than he’s inclined to keep records of. But for Draco– <br/><br/>He cannot lie. He does not believe he has it in himself to look Draco in his watery eyes and tell him that this will be okay. Instead, he chooses the truth, the jarring, jagged comfort of its harshness. “I’m going to go dispose of the body and the weapon. And then I’m going to clean the floor and the bedsheets. I need you to call K, inform them the agent’s dead and get in the shower. Can you do that?” <br/><br/>Draco stares. <br/><br/>“For me?” Harry adds, because Draco seems too distant to reach with mere words. He hopes the weight of emotion will help them sink in. “I need you to help.” <br/><br/>“I killed him,” Draco says, and his mouth twists in shock, as though the reality of what he’s done has finally settled with the utterance of the words. He turns his hands, palms up and stares. They aren’t half as bloody as Harry’s, but Harry doesn’t think that distinction makes it any better.<br/><br/>“You did,” Harry says, swallowing, unsure how to handle this. “You did, and it’s alright, because if you hadn’t…” he looks down at Julian, at the gun lying beside him, falling from his lax grip once the knife had hit its mark. “If you hadn’t, I’d be dead.” <br/><br/>Draco draws in a deep, shuddering breath. He clenches his eyes shut and bites down hard enough to tear through his lower lip. When he opens them again, he seems more present. “I need to call K,” he says slowly and methodically. The edges of his consonants are sharp and his vowels are clipped. “Inform them the agent’s dead. And then I– I need to, I need to get in the shower.” He falters, and his eyes turn questioning, then pleading. <br/><br/>Harry nods, holding Draco’s gaze, hoping to channel some fortitude through them. “That’s it.” <br/><br/>Draco nods. “I don’t, I need–“ he looks around, and Harry realises he’s looking for the burner phone. Harry focuses his magic and summons it, and it lands in front of Draco’s bent knees. A few millimetres away from the drying blood and the slick knife. <br/><br/>With one trembling hand Draco reaches for it, and Harry leaves him to it, turning back to the body. <br/><br/>Oh, Julian.<br/><br/>He’s not angry. He stopped being angry a while ago. <br/><br/>But it’s Julian. Julian with his bright eyes, Julian with his underhanded weapons hidden beneath his coat, Julian with his stories of Russia, and Bulgaria and Sweden. Julian, whispering dirty words into Harry’s ears, Julian drinking coffee across from him in a small coffee shop in West Virginia. Julian with his thin lipped smile, Julian with a gun pointed at his head, Julian with a knife in his neck. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Julian surprised, Julian falling, Julian dead. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry swipes a lock of his hair out of his face. Undoubtedly it’s now streaked with blood. Sighing, he draws the wand from his thigh holster, the one he wears even to sleep, and casts Evanesco on the bloody mess that is the floor. The blood vanishes. The dried sticky trails of it linger on the edge of the bed, and Harry knows from experience that nothing but a mop and a long, hard scrub will remove it. He’ll have to do that once he gets rid of Julian. <br/><br/>The bedsheets he realises once he stands up, are beyond repair. The blood has settled into the fibres, and no amount of Evanesco will remove it. Blood– it’s nature is to cling. And when it cannot cling to life, it clings to whatever it touches. Clothes, wood, skin. Everything. <br/><br/>He sighs. <br/><br/>Hunching over Julian’s body, he grips it under the armpits. The slack, lifeless arms drag along the floor. Closing his eyes and thanking the Founders that they chose a Muggle motel instead of a Wizarding one for the night, he closes his eyes and Apparates. Behind his eyes, the cliffside of Shell Cottage flashes like a vivid dream. </span>
</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The creatures of the deep seas will feast on flesh tonight.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Secret'st Man Of Blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>Retire we to our chamber.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>A little water clears us of this deed.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>How easy is it, then!</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">– Macbeth, William Shakespeare</span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><hr/><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When Harry comes back, the room is quiet. <br/><br/>His shirt is soaked with blood and ocean water, and his hair feels matted and dirty. It’s been a while since he’s had an unclean, messy body on his hands to dispose of. Over the years, his methods have grown more precise, and it’s been almost three years since he last used an object as a weapon instead of the lethal ropes of his wild magic. <br/></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Killing is the easy part. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Everything that comes after is what makes him such a prized commodity. He knows how to… take care of it. And it’s easier to take care of it when the body can be made to look like a heart attack victim than a mauled corpse. One can be artfully placed on a bed with the limbs arranged carefully to make it look like a believable biological fuck up. The other needs to be wiped from the face of the earth, deposited in smelting plants or pig feed in neglected barns or the bottom of the deep blue with stones weighing down the limp legs. <br/><br/>Harry prefers the tidiness of the former, but the latter is sometimes inescapable, and when a man kills for the first time, messy is an understatement. That Draco hit the jugular perfectly is either a stroke of luck or evidence of honed practice. Either way, they’re lucky they don’t have to spend the night repairing broken lamps and shattered vases and covering up evidence of a violent scuffle. Julian had a gun. That its bullets are still secured within and not buried in Harry’s gut or Draco’s head or even the plaster of the crumbling walls fills Harry with a bone deep sense of relief. <br/><br/>Draco kept him safe.<br/><br/>He peels the once white shirt off his body, realising now that he’d gone to sleep in it. It would have been considerably easier to iron out sleep warm wrinkles from it than the rusty stains of Julian’s leaking neck, but it is what it is. He needs to incinerate the fabric as fast as possible, but he’s had a gruelling day and a gruelling night, and he needs a shower and preferably ten hours of sleep before he burns anything. <br/><br/>Ministry employed contract killers have body clocks too, and Harry’s is more fucked up than he likes it to be. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">If he pays attention, he can hear the shower running. The sound eases the part of Harry that had remained restless even as he had tied boulders to Julian’s feet, worried sick for Draco’s distraught, disjointed consciousness. His eyes catch on the burner phone left on the side table, and he bends over to check. It’s been wiped clean, proof that Draco called. Proof that Draco had pulled himself together for long enough to make it through the motions of protocol. <br/><br/>A dead body needs to be reported. No matter whose it is, no matter how it’s ended up dead. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He aims a contained blast at the burner, and it shatters to pieces. He watches the fragmented plastic litter the floor and with a wearied burst of magic, Evanescoes everything away. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>Done</em>, he thinks, stretching his wrists out, and cracking the complaining joints of his back. <em>What a bloody nightmare.</em> </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The bedsheets are still stained. Coated in blood and sweat and rumpled from where Draco’s knees had pressed in. They need to change the sheets if they are to sleep, and though he’s reasonably sure Draco won’t be able to sleep tonight without a vial of Dreamless Sleep, Harry wants to crash into clean sheets and soft pillows and call it a fucking night. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">With a sigh, he realises he needs to conjure them. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He closes his eyes and lets himself feel the exhaustion. The whole of the last week has been wearying, with less murder but quite a bit of fieldwork. He has a target who still isn’t dead and now, a defected agent who is. He has to scrub the floor and then the bed, transfigure tissue papers into bedsheets. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But most importantly, he needs to check on Draco. <br/></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He pads over to the door of the bathroom, and after hesitating for a second, raps his knuckles against it. He does it as softly as possible, but in the silence of the bedroom and the faint gurgle of water from the bathroom, it sounds like a thunderclap. <br/><br/>“Is the door unlocked?” He doesn’t want to violate Draco’s privacy, doesn’t want to strip him bare when he already feels raw. But he needs to see Draco for himself, reassure the raging, broken bits of his heart that are clinging to the memory of Draco’s vacant eyes in the aftermath of the death. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He turns the handle when he receives no response. He’ll walk away, he tells himself, if it’s locked. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s not, and the door swings open on soundless hinges. <br/><br/>Harry waits to be turned away, for his presence to be protested, for any sound from Draco. There’s none, and panic sitting heavy in his throat, he walks in. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He doesn’t look towards the steady stream of the shower, turning instead to the basin. He turns the tap on, wincing when an errant streak of red taints the porcelain. The water is tepid, and he watches the clear stream of it turn red as it runs over his palms, his elbows, his forearms. It swirls away into the ether of Britain’s drainage system, evidence that Harry’s hands had ever touched Julian’s body being deleted for the very last time. <br/><br/>He splashes it onto his face, his throat, every available inch of himself that can be cleaned without a proper shower. He doesn’t want to face Draco marked all over with proof of his sins. Even the thought of it feels blasphemous somehow, like walking into a confession box holding a knife. <br/></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He surveys himself critically in the mirror. His hair is wet, but matted with dried blood that will not wash off without the workings of Harry’s dedicated fingers and the lather of shampoo. There are traces of caked blood in the lines of his throat that only soap may coax out. But his arms and abdomen are clean, though his whole body smells vaguely of the metallic tang of a cut lip. <br/><br/><em>This has to be enough</em>, Harry thinks, and turns. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco is sitting in the shower, knees drawn up to his chest, the platinum of his hair turning into spun gold under the incessant beating of the water. He’s trembling, delicately, like a leaf in the wind. Whether it’s from the water or his own guilt, Harry cannot tell. Perhaps both. It is immaterial anyway. Pain is pain, however it has been caused. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Proud Draco, haughty Draco, Draco with a smirk. What Harry wouldn’t give to see him now. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s holding his hands away from his body, as though he can’t quite bear to contemplate the fact that they belong to him. The Dark Mark is stark against his pale forearm. Draco’s face is turned away, his cheek resting on the plateau of his kneecaps. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry wants to hold him. <br/><br/>He approaches, wary, ready to leave if Draco expresses even a hint of reticence. But Draco looks like a rag doll in the rain, a puppet with a dead puppeteer. Harry crouches beside him, letting his muscles relax under the comforting, tepid spray. With one hand, he gently brushes Draco’s bangs out of his face. The obscured gray eyes don’t look vacant or lost as Harry had anticipated, but instead, they’re dark with resignation. <br/><br/>“Draco…” Harry whispers, unsure how else to proceed. He’s never seen the man like this, not on his worst days. On his worst days he rants and rages against his reflection, smashes coffee pots and glasses, flings his Malfoy ring from his finger onto the floor and then clutches it and cries. Never does he reduce himself to the shell of the man he is. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The closest Draco came to this was when he stepped out of Azkaban for the first time in one and a half years. Even then, the flash of fire in the ice of his eyes had been unmistakeable. Harry isn’t willing to admit how comforting it had been– that little toss of defiance in the tilt of his head, the dim ray of arrogance in the slant of his mouth. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Now– </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Not knowing what else to do, Harry sits down beside Draco, leaning against the cool tiles of the wall behind them. The water of the shower beats down on his strained thighs and his biceps, and he lets the wave of relaxation press out the tightly coiled weight of the day. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches the water swirling into the drain turn pink and then red as the grime and blood is washed out of his hair. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He feels cleaner than he has all day. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It’s like there’s blood on my hands,” Draco whispers, cutting through the monotony of the running water. “It’s not coming off.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He doesn’t sound lost. He doesn’t sound resigned. He sounds <em>terrified.</em></span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry turns to face him. He’s shuddering. Harry holds out his own hand, palm turned upwards. “Can I see?” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco shakes his head. “I don’t– I don’t…” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The words come out pained and restrained, as though Draco would like nothing more than to be held by Harry, but he’s holding back. <br/><br/>“Draco,” Harry says, voice low and as steady as he can make it. “Let me see.” <br/><br/>“I can’t touch you,” Draco says, and buries his face in the space between his knees. His trembling arms fall to the wet floor and the sobs wracking his body tear into Harry’s skin like vicious needles. <br/><br/>“Those hands saved me,” Harry whispers. “I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t gotten that blood on them. You could have let me die, could have run, could have saved yourself. Apparated away. You didn’t. You killed him, you kept me safe.” <br/><br/>Draco sobs. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Draco,” Harry says, helplessly. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I keep seeing red,” Draco says, voice raspy and choked. “I close my eyes and I see red, I open them and my hands are stained with it, Harry I can’t, I can’t keep–“ His whole body pitches sideways, and if Harry weren’t a barrier between him and the floor, he’d be lying on it by now, curled up and desolate. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As it happens, he’s leaning into Harry, his body cold and shaking, breaths gasped and thready. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>This is your fault</em>, Harry thinks to himself. <em>All your fault. You could have sent him home when he came to visit, but you had to be selfish.</em></span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I will wash them clean,” Harry says after a few seconds. “Draco, I’ll wash them clean.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco looks up at him, and the split second of naked hope etched on his face is enough for Harry to see through the facade of restraint. He wants Harry to touch him, wants Harry to wash the horrors away. “Let me,” Harry whispers, daring to reach up and cradle Draco’s face. Drenched in water and tears, it appears softer, less sharp. He doesn’t pull away. <br/><br/>Harry reaches down and pulls Draco’s unresisting left arm into his lap. It’s clean, not even a trace of blood anywhere, including under the nails or on the nail beds. But Draco shrinks away from it as though its coated in slickness and fresh blood. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Closing his eyes, Harry focuses the dregs of his exhausted magic into his palm, and when he opens them, it’s coated in liquid soap. Draco eyes it warily, but some of the tension bleeds out from the taut lines of his wrist. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Starting at the shoulder, Harry lathers Draco’s arm up, digging the tips of his fingers into the muscles, paying special care to the creases of the elbow and the veins down the forearm. He traces the raised bumps of the Dark Mark, washing around the tracery of scars and revels in the little increments of relaxation Draco begins to allow. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s working. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He gently washes Draco’s palm, twining their fingers together for a brief moment when he rubs soap between Draco’s fingers. A brief flicker of a smile darts over Draco’s scorched expression. Everything screaming within Harry quiets. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This. This is why he lets Draco <em>see</em> him. This is why he lays his soul bare to Draco. Because Draco bares his own to him. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Better?” Harry asks, once the lather has been washed off. “Cleaner?” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco looks, and after an indeterminate period of time, tilts his head in a nod of acquiescence. “Better,” he whispers. <br/><br/>Harry repeats the process with the other hand. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When Draco looks at him again, awareness sparks in his eyes. “Your hair,” he says without explaining further. Harry winces. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I can wash it off,” he rushes to say. “You can… you can wait outside, I’ll wash it off, and come out and change the sheets, and we can go to sleep.” <br/><br/>Another flicker of a smile. It lasts a second longer this time. <br/><br/>“You misunderstand,” Draco says, bringing a hand up to trace Harry’s jaw with a featherlight touch. Harry’s eyes flutter despite the situation, despite himself. “I was asking for the shampoo.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Oh. <em>Oh</em>. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Something amused and fond floats into the vacant spaces of Draco’s expression, and all of a sudden, the man pressed against Harry isn’t a foreign presence, isn’t a lost soul, but the Draco he knows, the Draco he– </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">loves. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It feels like earl grey in the morning, and blue tinted sunsets, and the scent of woodsmoke and broom polish. It feels like coming home. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>Oh Draco, my Draco.</em> </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“My hands are clean,” Draco says, holding them up. Harry doesn’t know if it’s meant to reassure him or Draco himself, but it seems to work for them both. <em>I want to touch you</em>, Draco says. <em>I want to hold you.</em></span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’ve seen him before,” Draco says eventually, working the shampoo into the roots of Harry’s hair. Harry’s on the verge of dozing off under his ministrations, but the words filter through to his floating consciousness. <br/><br/>“Julian?” He asks, wary of the path this going down. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yeah. The– The agent. We were in France, and he was sitting outside a coffee shop. He kept staring at you. I thought he was staring at your arse, but. Guess not.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry sighs. “Who knows,” he says.</span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You knew him,” Draco says. It’s not accusatory, it’s not suspicious. It’s barely a statement. It’s an observation, too flat to be a question and too nervous to be a certainty. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I did,” Harry says. “He was a… freelancer. We’ve worked together on certain missions. Same target, or two targets in the same house. This job isn’t done too well in groups, but… two’s company.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Is that why you let me stay?” Draco asks. “Two’s company? The research and development guy doesn’t belong in a hitman’s hotel room, after all.” <br/><br/>“You belong where I am,” Harry says. In some way or another, it’s been true since the very first year of Hogwarts. The tired smile on his lips comes unbidden. <br/><br/>Draco quiets down. When Harry opens his eyes just enough to peer at him, he finds Draco blushing. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Were you sleeping together?” Draco asks after a few seconds, rinsing the lather out of Harry’s hair. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“We used to, once. Not since… us.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A small, fierce smile fights through Draco’s mask of nonchalance to firmly seat itself upon his lips. “Okay,” he says, and that’s that. “Why did he come to kill you?” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Money,” Harry says with a shrug. “Jealousy, maybe. I don’t know, I don’t care. He was a threat to the Ministry’s asset, and he’s been taken care of.” <br/><br/><em>Asset.</em> Harry doesn’t think of himself now as an asset, but when he’s a killing machine in the quiet bedrooms and lively parties and dirty loos of seedy bars, he is one. He’s trained, and he’s precise, and he’s powerful– he’s everything the Ministry needs to get a job done.</span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’re more than the Ministry’s asset,” Draco says, a quiet warning in his words. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Mm,” Harry agrees, because it’s true. He is. He’s Harry Potter, the guy who runs the rehab centre in Hogsmeade for ex Azkaban prisoners. He’s Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley’s very best friend. He’s Harry Potter, the guy whom the Prophet stalks and Witch Weekly mails regularly for interviews. He’s Draco Malfoy’s… lover. He’s also an asset. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Enough,” Draco says, patting his cheek. “You’re clean.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry’s eyes open. Draco looks fond, and amused. There’s still traces of tightness around his eyes, lines of grief etched into his features that weren’t there this evening. That weren’t there when they went to bed together. That will now be there forever. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I killed a man,” Draco muses, holding Harry’s gaze. “How many have you killed? I never thought to ask.” <br/><br/>Harry shrugs. “I never thought to keep count.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s mouth opens, and then closes. “And you don’t… feel grief?”</span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Voldemort stole my innocence. There’s nothing left that these men can take from me. What should I grieve?” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s eyes hold no judgement. “He was the first person I ever killed,” he says. “I’ve tortured before, because the Dark Lord would… anyway. I’ve seen murder before. I’ve seen my professor being eaten by a giant snake before. But I’ve never… killed.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“And?” Harry prompts, when Draco stops there though it’s obvious there’s more he wants to say. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“And it was <em>horrifying</em>,” Draco says quietly. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m glad.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“What?” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I’m glad you found it horrifying.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco stares. <br/><br/>Harry shrugs. “It means you won’t become like me.” </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“I don’t find being you undesirable,” Draco says after a second. His eyes are brimming with something Harry can name easily. Something Harry will dare to name in a few days from now, when his Gryffindor courage will spill from his lips, and his eyes, and his hands. Something he will not be able to shutter away in the narrow cell behind his breastbone, between his ribs, because it is much too large to contain within brittle bones. </span><br/><br/>“But I like you the way you are,” Harry responds. </p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The light in Draco’s eyes shines brighter. He leans in, pressing his wet lips to Harry’s forehead in a chaste kiss. “You’re clean now,” he says. <em>The blood I spilled has been washed from your body. If I kiss you, you will not taste of the metal of his scream or the saltwater of his grave.</em></span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry brings Draco’s left wrist to his lips and presses a kiss to the flutter of Draco’s pulse. The thud of his heartbeat is slower now than it was before, but under Harry’s lips it speeds just a little. </span>
</p><p class="p3"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“So are you.” </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>kudos/comments/messages are love :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. What Is The Night?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">– Macbeth, William Shakespeare </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><hr/><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">They step out soon after, the jarring contrast between the safe, cleansed haven of the bathroom and the muggy, thick air of the bedroom making Harry’s head spin. He’s not squeamish, but he is tired, and every muscle throbs with fatigue and strain as the prospect of having to clean this mess up looms before him like a night terror. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I can–“ Draco begins, before his voice breaks down the middle like a record player running over a scratched, raw segment. “I can clean it up. You can sit down.” <br/><br/>And just like that, all of Harry’s momentary resentment recedes into the corner of his soul he reserves for the emotions he would rather lock away in the darkness than indulge with word or even thought. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No,” he says immediately. “We’ll do it together.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco nods, the knobs of his spine peeking out above the neckline of his clean white shirt shifting beneath the thin porcelain of his skin. It’s stilted and apprehensive– so much so that Harry’s whole body cries out with the desire to pull Draco close. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But he’s– oh wait. <br/><br/>His hands are not stained with Julian’s blood anymore. His face is not bearing the splatter of it, the proof of his first kill staring Draco in the face. He’s clean. There’s no reason why he should hold back save cowardice, and Harry– </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Well, Harry has never been much of a coward. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Tentatively, he reaches out, curling one arm around Draco’s waist. For a split second, the lithe body tenses, the muscles of his waist and his torso going taut. Harry almost pulls away, but Draco abruptly sags, leaning into Harry’s side, sighing delicately. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I just– there’s blood on the sheets.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I know,” Harry says. “We’ll wipe it clean.”<br/><br/>“Vanish them you mean,” Draco mutters drily. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry shrugs, the motion jostling Draco slightly. He pulls away just a little, but stays close enough for Harry to feel every breath as if it were his own from the proximity. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco sighs again. Harry hates the defeated, resigned note of it. Draco– his vibrant vortex of coloured summer skies and creative insults and aftershave that smells of faraway thunderstorms– is not meant to sound quite this broken down. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This Draco’s shoulders slump every time he looks towards the rumpled sheets. This Draco’s eyes have a detached tint to them that pierces the softest part of Harry’s heart. This Draco’s cut glass smile has been whittled away into a barely there upturn of lips that Harry wants to kiss and taste anyway. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">So he does. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He pulls Draco in, unresisting, by the waist and presses a soft, open mouthed kiss first to the bridge of his nose, then the tip of it and then finally his lips. Draco parts them, hands coming up to cradle Harry’s face. There’s the familiar push and pull, the give and take of shared breaths and the gentle music of connected heartstrings playing in Harry’s head. It’s exquisite. Sharp enough to ground them both in the moment, in each other’s arms, in the assurance that neither of them have to do this alone. Quiet enough to soothe. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s raw, and heartbreaking and everything Harry has been trying to avoid for the sake of his job. He wouldn’t give it up for the world. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Clean-up,” he whispers against Draco’s lips, pulling away slightly. Draco’s lashes flutter against his cheek. It’s all Harry can do to not push him down on to the bed, blood-soaked sheets be damned, and take him apart with his fingers, and mouth and cock. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Simultaneously they turn to the bed, and with matching sighs of disgust, they set about cleaning up the mess Julian made. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Yes, Julian. Harry refuses to attribute this nightmare to anyone except the man who decided sneaking up on him and his boyfriend in the dark to potentially slaughter them both was a good idea. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry strips the bed of the sheets and Draco hunts through the bedside table’s drawers for anything that can be transfigured into serviceable bedsheets that won’t raise the alarm with the Muggle cleaning help. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">By the time they’re done, Harry’s magic feels thready from the strain of having to Vanish swathes of fabric that are ridiculously stubborn when it comes to succumbing to magical forces. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Trust him and Draco to end up in a hotel room with bedsheets as stubborn as themselves. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He looks up to see Draco folding in the corner of a sheet that looks remarkably similar to the one he just vanished. It’s a little too crinkled, probably a leftover side effect from transfiguring crumpled tissue papers, but it does the job. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s precise magic never fails to impress Harry. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Done,” Draco says, looking down at his hands. “All new.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You need to sleep.” <br/><br/>“Here?” Draco grimaces. “In the bed I just cleaned of the blood I spilled?” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry sighs.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Do you trust me?” he asks finally, when Draco does nothing but stare at everything but the bed and Harry for the next few minutes. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The cool grey of Draco’s gaze would be chilly to anyone else. But Harry cuts through the layers of defences, the reconstructed walls, the resurfaced trauma and finds fear and flashing insecurity in the constricted pupils. Draco’s lip twitches. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Draco, do you trust me?” Harry asks again, when there’s no response. Draco stares. Looks down. Looks away. Looks back at Harry. Nods. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Then come here.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">With small, hesitant steps Draco comes to stand before Harry. He looks mistrustfully at the bed and then takes a deep breath. Harry almost feels bad. Wants to Apparate them away somewhere that doesn’t smell of betrayal and grief. <br/><br/>“I want you to sit down,” he says instead.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco shoots him a panicked look. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Trust me, Draco?” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Squeezing his eyes shut, Draco perches on the very edge of the bed. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Further back.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco scoots back minutely. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“More.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">A little bit farther. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“That’s it.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s sitting on the bed now, discomfort obvious on the scrunch of his features. Harry can almost hear his screaming thoughts. <em>I killed a man here. His blood was all over this bed. A man tried to kill me here. My blood was almost all over this bed.</em> </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry kneels. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s eyes fly open. “Harry, what–“ </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Trust me? Say no whenever and we’ll stop.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs, the curve of his throat pronounced. “I– Okay.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">With a small smile, Harry places his hands on Draco’s knees. They’re shaking ever so slightly, as though Draco is physically restraining himself from standing back up. The muscles of his thighs are bunched and his calves are painfully taut. Harry runs his hands up over Draco’s thighs to his hips and back down to his calves and up to the backs of his knees. He remains careful, unwilling to push down too hard. He knows how touch can feel when it’s too sharp and you feel too soft. He knows the lacerations of knife edge cuts that don’t bleed and the vulnerability of losing one’s innocence in a foreign bed. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But with every little touch, a little more tension seems to bleed out of Draco’s rock hard muscles. When with a particularly delicate brush to the side of his knee elicits something suspiciously close to a choked off moan, Harry looks up to find Draco staring down with wide eyes and parted lips. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He looks surprised– with Harry, with the world, with himself– and his lips are bitten and red. Unable to resist the urge, he pulls Draco down by the back of his neck into a searing kiss. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">This one is rougher. Harry’s fingers dig into the soft skin of Draco’s nape and Draco’s searching hands find purchase in Harry’s hair. Their mouths are urgent, and when Harry’s teeth brush purposefully against the swell of Draco’s lower lip, the full body shudder that runs from the roots of the blond hair down to the arched feet is immensely satisfying. The trembling subsides somewhat, Draco’s misgivings and revulsion sliding back to the recesses of his brain. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When they pull away, Draco’s lost. His pupils are dilated, his hands are slack and his mouth is kiss swollen and perfect. He looks like a debauched angel, and if Harry were religious in the least, he would have believed in the possibility of Hell. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Surely those who tasted Heaven in the careful embrace of Earth didn’t find it in the afterlife? </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">They stare at each other, drinking in the sight of wild hair and rumpled clothes and bruised mouths for a second too long. It feels overwhelming and achingly hollow all at once– too much intertwining itself with the constant whisper of not enough, not yet in the ransacked mess of Harry’s mind. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You look like you were made for me,” Harry blurts out before he can censor himself. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco’s eyes widen for a split second before softening. “That would hardly be the worst thing,” he says in a voice so soft that Harry would have missed the words if the room hadn’t been silent. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">As it happens, his pulse thunders in his ears, his throat, in flashes on the wings of his eyelids when they flutter shut with the impact of the words. There is no silence now, only the riotous violence of emotions in every cell of Harry’s being. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He can’t hold back any longer. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He reaches up, fingers shaky against the button of Draco’s jeans. Draco’s hands fist and release in the transfigured bedsheets, and Harry wants to touch them, twine his fingers through them, bring them to his lips and kiss the knuckles until the memory of the knife’s hilt was nothing but a whisper of a dream– forgotten in the easy haze of a dawn lit horizon. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He unzips the suddenly complicated fly, and when the jeans fall open to reveal Draco’s bulge prominent within his pants, Harry’s mouth waters. In one fluid motion, the jeans and pants are tugged down to pool around Draco’s ankles. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry could vanish them with a flick of his fingers. He could take a second more and tug them off completely. But there’s something erotically arousing about Draco being trapped in position by scraps of fabric– his Draco, his powerful, brilliant Draco, held in place by the stretchy material of his pants. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Something flashes in Draco’s storm wrecked eyes when he cottons on to Harry’s intentions. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Pervert,” he whispers. There’s the beginning of a grin forming in the corners of that smart mouth and if Harry wasn’t so intent on putting his mouth elsewhere, he’d have pulled Draco down for another kiss. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But Draco’s flushed, leaking cock is bobbing in Harry’s face, and his hips are arching slightly off the bed in hopeless arousal. With a hungry groan, Harry wraps his hand around it. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yes?” He asks, looking up. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Unless you’re waiting on an engraved invitation.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Answer me.” The words come out more authoritative than Harry intends them to be. But Draco is in a fragile place and Harry won’t let his usual clever wordplay distract him from firm, verbalised consent. He doesn’t want to force anything on Draco that he doesn’t want to participate in, anything he thinks he should participate in for Harry’s sake. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Yes,” Draco says, eyes darkening again. His pupils are dilated and his hands are fisted tightly in the sheets. If they’re not careful, they’ll be fucking on a bare mattress.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Okay,” Harry says. He moves his hands up to grip Draco’s thighs tightly. With a light push, he shoves them apart, and the pants pooled around his feet make a slight ripping noise. Seams tearing, perhaps. Maybe just the fabric stretching to accommodate the tight fit. Either way, it’s loud as a thunderclap in the room and Draco’s ears flame red. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s hideously sexy and Harry is hard in the restrictive confines of his own loose sweatpants. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Aren’t you a glorious sight,” he says, leaning in, letting his breath ghost gently over Draco’s leaking tip. The groan Draco emits as his hands fly into Harry’s hair and clench the curls in a death grip is distinctly pornographic. Distantly Harry recalls that they definitely did not remember to put up Silencing Charms. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He can’t be arsed to care. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Gently, Harry leans in to suckle carefully at the head of Draco’s cock. It’s a heavy, warm weight in Harry’s mouth, one he is familiar with from all their trysts and rendezvouses in shady motels much like this one. But something about today feels more weighted than usual. The clench of Draco’s fist in Harry’s hair feels holier, more sacred than it would on any regular mission. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><em>He killed for me</em>, Harry thinks, and is almost surprised at the way his cock leaps. The faint sound that vibrates around Draco’s length in his mouth has Draco gasping desperately on the bed. Such sweetness. If the fucking sounds Draco kept making were delicacies, Harry wouldn’t need dessert again in his life. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He slides his hands up to Draco’s bare hips, letting his thumbs trace gentle circles into the thin skin there. It’s a calming gesture, but paired with the way Harry is swallowing Draco down further, there is nothing calm or soothed about Draco’s wanton reaction. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Bastard,” Draco gasps through his teeth when he tries to thrust up but can’t because of Harry’s firm grip on his hips. “Faster, Harry, fuck, <em>please.</em>” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">And oh, if Draco moaning is sweet, then Draco begging is saccharine and Harry’s being is sated with it, saturated with it. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">He swallows Draco down, expertly deflecting his gag reflex. Draco tastes clean and salty from the shower and the soap, and Harry wouldn’t give it up for the world. </span><br/><br/>He holds Draco down with one hand and the other finds its traipsing way to the clench of Draco’s right fist in the sheets. He encircles the wrist, thudding with the sharp pulse of Draco’s racing heartbeat in a loose grasp. Every tremor wracking Draco’s frame now shudders through Harry’s grip up to his shoulders and then down through the pathway of his muscles to his cock. </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s tired from the day’s exhaustions and he doubts he can successfully get himself off without falling asleep, but he would have to be something other than a red blooded bloke of twenty five to not be aroused by the helpless little moans and jerks being wrung out of Draco’s tense body. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s on the edge, hips quivering with the tension of the brink and Harry sucks loudly and indelicately to urge him over the edge. He’s unapologetically sloppy now, mouth creating obscene sounds of suction and pressure around Draco’s cock. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He feels Draco’s orgasm approach before he tastes it. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It starts in the trembling muscles of Draco’s thighs and the quivering muscles of his stomach, a vortex of arousal and sensation whirlpooling into a mass of fraught nerve endings and stimulation. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco cries out obscenities and Harry’s name (which in itself sounds rather close to an obscenity when Draco says it like that) and his whole body goes tense and shaky as he empties into Harry’s mouth. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He tastes like he always does– salt and musk and sweat– and Harry has grown too familiar with that taste to not be willing to swallow it down. He brushes the stray drops off with the back of his hand, and watches Draco try to catch his breath. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There’s silence in the room now, unnatural in contrast to the sounds they had been making seconds prior. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’re exceptionally good at figuring out things I don’t quite know how to articulate,” Draco says in a rare bout of bald honesty. Orgasms loosen his mouth and pleasure always makes him favourable towards Harry. “I feel better.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Good,” Harry says, stifling a yawn. Already his arousal is subsiding, his dick deflating as his exhaustion replaces the sharp sense of sensuality in his gut. “You need sleep.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco hesitates for barely a second before nodding. “I might dream… of him.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry nods. He wouldn’t dare to assume otherwise. They grew up in a war, regardless of loyalties. Neither of them are strangers to the night terrors of trauma. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Wake me up if you do,” Harry says instead of offering false reassurance.</span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I doubt you will,” Draco says dryly, looking down at Harry’s slumped form with a slight flicker of amusement passing over his relaxed features. “You look dead on your feet.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Bury a man and you will too,” Harry mumbles before the words catch up to him. He winces immediately. “Draco, I–“ </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“All I heard is you worked yourself too hard today,” Draco says firmly, cutting him off. Harry nods, guilt still churning in his gut. “And I– I might not be feeling quite as bad as I did.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Sucked the shame out, did I?” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Don’t be vulgar.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“No, no, tell me. Will I feel it now, given that I swa–“ </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It <em>really</em> is in your best interests to shut up.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I want a kiss.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Gross.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry waves his hand and his mouth feels fresh. Minty. Benefits of magic are truly unending. It’s been roughly fifteen years and he’s still astounded by the sheer ease of certain things. </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Draco presses a kiss to his lips so chaste and featherlight that Harry chases him with closed eyes just a little when he pulls away. “Sleep now,” Draco says, voice full of quiet reprimand. “Tomorrow we can relax.” </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Harry does as he’s told, clambering onto the bed, beneath the soft covers. Draco does the same, curling in on himself, close but not quite touching. When Harry shuts his eyes, sleep riding into the room that smells of their mingled sweat and the taste of their absolution, a slender finger brushes the errant curls out of his eyes and Harry thinks he might just be brave enough to– </span>
</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">
    <em>I love you. </em>
  </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>hope you enjoyed that! kudos/comments/messages are positive reinforcement! find me on tumblr @/ohdrarry !!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos/comments/messages are soul food, I would be so grateful if you would drop them in :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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